Lady Death # 0 – The 90’s Called… They Said It’s Over

This has everything you’d expect form a zero issue. It reintroduces the main character, establishes a mystery and ends with a shocking reveal. Too bad the formula it follows isn’t interesting to read.

Long Version

Upon Boundless Comics – an Avatar Press imprint – announcement that they were bring back Lady Death, I thought “Great she’d be cool to see in our modern story focused comics.” Then I read the issue. Creator/Co-writer Brian Pulido manages to plop Lady Death back into familiar roles, but unfamiliar clothes.

The book opens in the Under Realm with a slave/demon escaping to the Living Realm. He’s on a mission to bring Lady Death a.k.a. Illadra something she’s lost. Meanwhile Illadra and a band of mercenaries are on a mission to save a town’s girl from a castle of cannibals. The band of merc’s is your typical bunch of stereotypes each having a type of weapon that they specialize in that makes them useful to the team.

After successful storming the castle and rescuing the girl, the merc’s make camp outside of town. There the escaped demon finds Lady Death. Of course surprising a bunch of merc’s isn’t the best idea and they all take turns trying to grab the demon that has stated numerous times that he’s not there to harm them. Another battle ensues as the escaped demon’s captures come to kill him, this sets off the entire camp. One by one the merc’s are killed along with the demons until only Illandra remains.

It’s a zero issue and I get it, you don’t want to give away all of your good stuff before the series truly launches. There are several problems with this issue and that notion though. The first being that the price and page count is the same of a regular issue so this is more of a first issue than anything else. The second is that this issue reminded me of why Lady Death was cancelled and moved from publisher to publisher so many times previously.

It really boils down to the writing being very generic and boring. I’m not sure what Mike Wolfer’s involvement in the story was, if it was just dialog and narration or if he was involved in the plot. Frankly, it reads just like any other Brian Pulido comic he’s ever written. I understand that he’s the creator and has always been very excited about the character, but at some point he needs to let someone come in and steer this ship so it stops hitting icebergs.

Frankly I figured he’d wouldn’t be attached to it since after Chaos! Comics closed and he had to sell a lot of the characters off to pay debts (Mostly to the people working there) that his hands wouldn’t be on the series. But there he is, continuing to tell stories suited for the mid 90’s rather than the modern era.

It’s sad because I wanted to like this book. Lady Death’s new costume is refreshing and suitable and says, “I’m not here just to sell sex.” Too bad the writing says, “Copy and Paste.” If you were looking for a nineties revival then don’t get your hopes up, unless you’re still into that era’s art over story like productions.

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